


blood at the hand of the sentinel

by 28ghosts



Category: xXx (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Sentinels and Guides Are Known, M/M, Sentinel/Guide Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 13:15:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14356269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Xander Cage grows up a Guide; he never expects to meet his match.





	blood at the hand of the sentinel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vaenire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vaenire/gifts).



Maybe if Xander hadn’t been a Guide, he never would have ended up doing shit like stealing cars and driving them off bridges mostly for the goddamn thrill of it. Of course, it wasn’t like he knew he was a Guide, not then. Didn’t know the first thing about Sentinels or zoning or shields. Sixteen years old and all he knew was adrenaline made everything go blank again. It got the world out of his head.

Seventeen years old and he meets someone else like him, someone who teaches him how to take the same razor-sharp focus he uses learning a trick and use it to throw up walls, to keep the world out.

After that, it’s only when his focus slips that all the world rushes in. When he hits a nose stall wrong and nearly knocks himself out on the ramp. When he gets drunk for the first time. (Never again.)

When he wakes up in a diner with foggy memories of his party getting crashed.

Before he can throw his shields up, he knows that everything -- _everything_ is wrong.

-

(Fifteen years later.)

-

“X,” Adele says, “what’s your read?”

Xander leans back against the railing of the boat and lets his shields drop just enough to feel the pulse of human life in the distance. He doesn’t like dropping his shields, but the way Adele’s holding herself, she’s worried. It doesn’t take long to figure out why.

Xander feels the low presence of mutes, and then there is the bright vibrating sense of other Guides and Sentinels. There’s Adele first, and he doesn’t expect to feel anyone else. But in the distance, there’s the twin presences of another Guide and Sentinel pair. Both strong enough to feel from a distance. Both strong enough, surely, to feel them coming.

It’s easy for Xander to feel Adele. She’s still familiar, even after seven years. He and Adele had always just clicked. Hell, the first time they’d worked together, he’d broken her out of a zone. And he’d watched her hone her self-control over years until when she was behind the trigger, she could lend enough energy into her sight to shoot a man half a mile off without a scope. She’s the type of Sentinel who barely needs a Guide. But when she needs one, well, Xander can do what needs to get done.

He eases his attention further out, trying to get a feel for the other pair. It’s just a few seconds before the Guide’s shields slam up and the Sentinel’s too. It’s like something yanking the blinds down. He can tell they’re still there, but they’re fuzzier, evasive.

Figures Marke’s ghosts would have a well-trained Guide and Sentinel pair. Anything else would be too easy.

“My read?” Xander says. “This is gonna get interesting.”

-

The minute he looks up and sees the man from Marke’s security cam footage, wearing a garish floral shirt and staring straight at him, he knows. “I spotted our clown,” he says over the mic. “And I’m pretty sure he’s also our Sentinel.”

“Easier than expected,” Nicks replies.

“His Guide won’t be far behind, X,” Adele says. “They’re nearby, I can feel it.”

Just a couple minutes later, he has a knife pressed to the Guide’s throat, and the Guide has a gun at his balls. Her name is Serena, he’s told.

And he can feel the Sentinel waiting in the dark, watching, studying them.

Fuckin’ figures.

-

“We have an advantage,” Serena says. She looks a little guilty. “Xiang is minus a Guide now. He’ll have to be a little more cautious. No one to pull him back from a zone.”

Who the hell is this Sentinel, Xiang, that he needs a Guide like Serena? She’s gotta be stronger than him, more of a natural. That he can feel it and she can’t is a function of experience, not of natural aptitude--

If he was that kinda Guide, well, Xander can’t imagine leaving a Sentinel he’d worked with behind. Not if he didn’t want that Sentinel dead.

“What the hell’s a zone?” Nicks says.

And Marke interrupts with, “You’re telling me this guy’s a Sentinel, too? Great. Just what we needed.”

“A zone’s when a Sentinel’s senses get overwhelming,” Xander says. “They go kinda comatose. Overwhelmed by physical sensations. Smell, touch, hearing, whatever, you name it. That’s what gets ‘em.”

From the way Serena looks at him, he knows that she knows he’s a Guide, too.

Most people don’t get it, the way the signals of the real world can drive somebody crazy. Xander’s one of them. And, like Serena, at least he realizes he’s one of them. It’s likely that only Sentinels really get it, the way a single scent can fuck you up that bad. The way if you’re a wreck already that a loud noise can drive you inside yourself ‘til it takes someone who knows you real well to yank you out.

Xander says, “That’s how we’ll get Xiang.”

-

They meet each other fist to fist, of course they do.

Xander’s ears ring as he scrambles to his feet.

He’s not the kinda Guide who gets pulled in by any Sentinel blaring distress. Lots of Sentinels have managed to kill Guides that way: flare up like they’re overwhelmed, and turn with a gun when the mark turns up to help them.

But Xiang’s senses are overwhelming him, and he can’t focus enough to clear his head. The blare of traffic, the sun glinting off the cars, it’s too much -- Xander can’t help it, he reaches out and yanks--

\--and suddenly there’s quiet, blessed quiet.

And then panic.

Xiang’s bent over, staring at Xander, wide-eyed, horrified. A Sentinel robbed briefly of every sense that made him himself.

Fuck.

There’s an SUV swerving towards them; Xander tackles Xiang. They hit the pavement together. He doesn’t know what’s wrong -- it’s like no matter how much he concentrates, he can’t get Xiang out of his head. 

Xiang gets up. They keep moving.

-

Someone orders Xiang to his knees. He’s staring at Xander while he kneels and puts his hands behind his head, sneering as one of the NSA guys handcuffs him. Xander has trouble looking away until Marke starts talking again.

“Watch out, Cage. Keep this up and people might mistake you for one of the good guys.”

Xander doesn’t mean to speak but he says, “You’ve got Pandora’s Box, and we both know Xiang’s not the bad guy here. Let him go.”

“And who do we blame for Moscow?” Marke asks. She has the Box in one hand, her phone in the other. “Better a dead terrorist than a living company man. See what I’m saying? Donovan, back on the plane. I want wheels up in twenty.”

Xander watches one of the soldiers haul Xiang off. And he does something he hasn’t done in a long time. He drops his shields, every single one of them. The sensory things hit him first, amplified by having a Sentinel so near: heat and the smell of blood and gunpowder. But he closes his eyes and lets everything else in, too. The blurry empathetic feel of human life. The soldiers’ focus, and Marke’s coldness. In an instant, he knows he’s fucked up. He still doesn’t trust Xiang, not exactly. But he knows he’s trusted Marke too long when he shouldn’t have ever trusted her at all. 

He doesn’t really know how this shit works. He’s not like Serena. Never studied how to reach out to other Guides and Sentinels or how to use the power he never asked for or wanted to do anything. But he’s always had good instincts. He tries to reach out for Xiang and tell him I’m not leaving you behind. It probably doesn’t work.

-

Xander lets himself drop when the bullets hit him. Actually, it doesn’t require much acting. Becky’s body armor is damned good, but there’s nothing out there good enough to make a bullet hitting you at something like point-blank range not hurt like hell. He forces himself still as Marke barks her orders.

Xiang is rattling his handcuffs and screaming Xander’s name.

He forces himself not to breathe. It doesn’t take long for his ears to start ringing, and he’s starting to feel faint by the time all the soldiers’ footsteps start sounding quiet enough that he thinks he can risk opening his eyes. He heaves in breath and tilts his head and winks at Xiang. “Body armor,” he whispers.

He figures Xiang knew. If Marke’s foot soldiers were any good, even they could have heard the difference between a bullet tearing through a body and a bullet hitting armor. But Donovan and his boys were sloppy. Which is why he’s still alive. Xiang, though -- he guesses Xiang could hear the way Xander’s heartbeat sped up as his body fought against his lack of oxygen.

Xiang looks unsurprised to see him alive, though furious. There’s always seemed to be a little something unhinged to Xiang. And right now, it’s real close to the surface.

“You’re uninjured?” he hisses.

“Couple bruised ribs,” Xander says. He hazards shifting the way his head lies so he can scope out how many soldiers are left in the loading bay of the airplane -- just one guy, younger, nearby. He stares for a second, then looks back at Xiang, jerks his head. Xiang nods, and Xander closes his eyes again, playing dead.

Xiang baits the soldier and knocks him on his ass real fast, and Xander springs to his feet to punch him in the face and finish the job. He stays crouched over the unconscious soldier for a few moments, waiting to see if anyone’s noticed him moving. They’re lucky, though, and Donovan’s team is busy enough doing pre-flight prep that Xander can rifle through the soldier’s pockets, find his keys, and free Xiang without anyone noticing.

He calls Serena to warn them, and he tells himself they’ll all manage to get out. They’re all capable agents and non-agents in their own rights, and that’s before factoring in Serena and Adele’s weird new...thing.

Xiang is rubbing at his wrists, staring at Xander as the plane takes off. Staring at him like he can’t figure him out.

“Hey,” says Xander. “You should know. For whatever reason, I -- I trust you, man.”

Like a rubber band getting snapped right before it would’ve broken, something between them aligns.

Xiang looks terrified. And Xander doesn’t need to puzzle out why.

“I say that because usually I don’t like other people in my head,” Xander says, standing slowly. Xiang’s senses are bleeding into his: the keening sound of the aircraft lifting up, the barely-there taste of blood in the air. “But you’re up in my head right now, and I don’t think we got much of a choice if we want out of this thing.”

Xiang staggers to his feet. “I want out,” he says. There’s something to his tone, though.

“Okay,” says Xander. And he’s running in the back of his head all the likelihoods they survive. “Any way out you want, I got your back. ‘Cause I trust you.”

It’s the right thing to say. His Guide-sense is open wide and Xiang’s Sentinel-sense crashes into it, terrified, overstimulated -- how disciplined is this man that he’s managed this long? Xander doesn’t know, but his wonder, his awe, he doesn’t hide it.

-

In the back of his head, Xander feels it when Xiang nearly goes down.

And he feels it in Xiang when the plane’s gone up in flames but nobody down on earth can see what he’s pulled off.

He can’t feel it in Adele. Not for a dozen seconds.

He lands, he plays it off like it’s no big thing. And Xiang, who he barely knows, grabs him by the shoulders with shaking hands. They look at each other in the middle of a smoking fucking ruin. By all rights, neither of them should know who to trust. Not Gibbons. Not the US government.

“How touching,” Adele says drily--

And Serena’s breath hitches. Xander only hears it ‘cause Xiang’s fingers are curling uncomfortably into his biceps, and Xiang is some crazy weird insane Sentinel who gets in Xander’s head like no one else--

“I don’t want to rain on anyone’s extrasensory parade,” says Darius Stone, lounging against the side of his car, “but we oughta get the hell outta here.”

-

On a dark aircraft, masked from every detection system that Becky’s ever heard of, Xiang sits down next to Xander Cage in the middle of a mostly empty cargo compartment.

And when Xander grabs Xiang’s throat to kiss him it’s like he can feel himself grabbing his own throat.

Xiang does nothing but groan in approval.

Their senses meld together, at least for a little while. Long enough to forget. Long enough to begin something.

-

For the first time since Xander watched someone faceplant and then felt it, he gets it. He gets why some people say there’s certain Guides and Sentinels meant for each other. He gets it, and more than that, he gets that Xiang gets it, too.

For the first time, the both of them.

-

Serena nearly tries to read him the riot act when they land at the safehouse, but all Xander neads to do is raise an eyebrow -- don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way with Adele is the implication.

She backs off.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading; kudos & comments rly do mean the world!


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